Revolution in Egypt and the Hidden Hand

Egypt is in the grip of revolutionary violence. The longstanding regime of Hosni Mubarak may be overthrown. If this happens, the consequences will be far-reaching. Egypt has the largest population and the strongest military in the Arab world. If a revolutionary Jihadist regime takes power in Egypt, then Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates will probably not survive. In that event, the oil-rich Persian Gulf will fall into the hands of radicals who are likely to use oil as a weapon against Europe, Japan and America. Following the pattern of other revolutionary regimes, the radicals will realign their respective countries with Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.

Some of the most famous terrorists of recent history have been Egyptians. The PLO's longtime terrorist leader, Yasser Arafat, was an Egyptian; and so was 9/11 mastermind and ringleader Mohammed Atta, as well as bin Laden's lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri. We also have testimony from former East Bloc intelligence officials that these Egyptian luminaries worked for Moscow, for the KGB and/or its sister agencies. It is no accident that radical Islam's concern for the oppressed underclass resembles liberation theology, which Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) referred to as a "fundamental threat to the faith of the Church." According to Ratzinger, liberation theology "goes beyond denominational borders: from its own starting point it frequently tries to create a new universality for which the classical church divisions are supposed to have become irrelevant." The same could be said of radical Islam as it seeks to unify the various sects of Islam by focusing popular rage against the Great Satan (America) and the Little Satan (Israel).

The unrest in Egypt should also remind us of something from our own past. In the 1960s student radicals demonstrated in favor of the Vietcong. They were called "antiwar" protestors, but in truth they were supporting terrorism. The impulse of the Left, even now, is the same. As newspapers carried stories about the Irish Republican Army, the Red Brigades, Basque ETA, PKK, Vietcong, ANC, and other Communist-backed movements, student protestors were taking the theme of "liberation" into the streets. President Richard Nixon wanted to know if the antiwar movement was financed or directed from Moscow, and he tasked the CIA to investigate. But the CIA found nothing. Many scholars have taken this as proof that Moscow did not support the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War, though testimony has emerged that contradicts the prevailing view. According to a book titled Through the Eyes of the Enemy, written by Russian GRU defector Col. Stanislav Lunev, Soviet officials had long been funneling money to support "the most aggressive and violent minority leaders" in America. These were activists, according to Lunev, "who could either sway people to the Soviet point of view or cause general turmoil in the United States." Lunev further wrote: "The GRU funded every major antiwar group. Any antiwar activists who claim otherwise are sadly naive." [p. 170] By using a chain of untraceable intermediaries the Soviet Union pumped more than twice as much money into the antiwar movement in the United States than it put into the North Vietnamese military machine and economy. Today, with Russia's involvement in organized crime and drug trafficking, mob violence may be readily whipped up, bought and paid for with laundered cash.

The rise of terrorism, together with the rise of massive street demonstrations, was integral to the Soviet Bloc pattern of accelerating the "national liberation" struggles of the Third World. According to Finnish historian and researcher Antero Leitzinger, by 1968 Moscow had designated Egypt as its principal base for subverting the entire Arab world. Despite the fact that President Anwar Sadat broke with the Soviet Union and wiped out many KGB agents in Egypt, Sadat was nonetheless assassinated and a new subversive movement was developed. The KGB turned to political Islam "as the most promising basis for winning Arab hearts" in Egypt. Meanwhile, the Iranian Revolution served as a guidepost. "Among the closest associates of Khomeini there were many Communists who had conveniently grown beards," noted Leitzinger. "Mustafa Ali Chamran had studied in California and Egypt before he founded a Red Shi'ite secret society. His pupils included later foreign minister Ibrahim Yazdi, oil minister Mohammed Gharazi, and a Lebanese fellow student [at] Berkeley University, Hussein Shaikh al-Islam, who led the occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran."

But aren't the Islamists the enemies of Russia? Didn't they defeat Russia in the Afghan War? Readers should set aside the popular mythology of Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, and take a look at the facts. Afghanistan was a Soviet laboratory for incubating the perfect Manchurian Islamist. The ancient Russian practice of political provocation was here used to great advantage. Throughout much of the Afghan War the Soviets controlled a significant number of Islamic fighters. According to KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin there were many false flag operations within Afghanistan. In fact, by January 1983 the KGB had trained 86 "false bands" under KGB officer V. Kikot of the 8th Department of Directorate S. Much of the factional fighting between Muslim groups was KGB or GRU-inspired. All this was possible, wrote Leitzinger, because the CIA merely threw money and supplies into Afghanistan without developing a core group of Afghan experts. Thus, Russia was able to manipulate the country's Islamist groups through its agents, preparing Afghanistan as a "base" (al Qaeda) to be used against America in the future.

At this point in our discourse the reader might scratch his head and ask an obvious question: Haven't the Islamists been killing Russians? Haven't they bombed Russian apartments, blown up Russian airline passengers, murdered Russian hostages?

According to former KGB Lt. Col. Konstantin Preobrazhensky, "Americans generally believe that Russia is afraid of Islamic terrorism as much as the U.S.A." Many of us have read about the 1999 apartment bombings in Russia, the fighting in Chechnya, the Nord-Ost theater hostage-taking, the Beslan School massacre, and the recent airport bombing. "But in all these events," says Preobrazhensky, "the participation of the FSB [KGB] ... is also clear. Their involvement in the Moscow blasts has been proven by lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin, a former FSB Colonel." Preobrazhensky might have added that the staged Nord-Ost tragedy was famously exposed as a KGB provocation by the martyred Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya; and the wholesale KGB fabrication of a Chechen terrorist threat was exposed by KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko (who famously died of radiation poisoning in November 2006).

To Americans, who know almost nothing of real KGB methods, who do not understand the techniques of "provocation" and "false flag" operations, the surface facts of the case appear confusing, or contrary to common sense. Would the Russian special services really organize terrorist attacks on Russian citizens? It is hardly credible! But that is only because Americans are unacquainted with KGB history, with the mass killings of the Stalin regime, and the bloodthirstiness of the "organs" of the Soviet state, long dedicated to terrorism. As former KGB officers have attempted to explain, there is a logical connection between Islamic terrorism and Russia. "The late Alexander Litvinenko ... told me that his former FSB colleagues had trained famous al-Qaeda terrorists Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Juma Namangoniy during the 1980s and 1990s," wrote Preobrazhensky. "Before his death, Juma Namangoniy (Jumabai Hojiyev), a native of Soviet Uzbekistan, was a right-hand man of Osama bin Laden in charge of the Taliban's northern front in Afghanistan."

How did Litvinenko know all this? In 1996, says Preobrazhensky, "Alexander Litvinenko was responsible for securing the secrecy of Al-Zawahiri's arrival in Russia...." In the book Allegations: Selected Works by Alexander Litvinenko we read Litvinenko's own words: "Arabs ... who studied in the Soviet universities or KGB special schools, have always been recruited as KGB agents on [a] massive scale." According to Litvinenko the KGB recruited so many Palestinians at one point that KGB Chariman Yuri Andropov issued a special order to halt further recruitments. It is no wonder, said Litvinenko, that "Hamas leaders still follow an old habit of going to Moscow to bow to their master...."

Preobrazhensky's text also mentions that the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, reportedly met with a senior Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague. "But Iraqi intelligence was just a client of Russian intelligence service," wrote Preobrazhensky. There even exists a report from Czech sources (i.e., allegedly from former BIS Captain Vladimir Hucin) that Atta was recruited and trained in Czechoslovakia prior to the fall of Communism. Atta's subsequent trips to Prague, in advance of 9/11, should have been more thoroughly investigated by the FBI and CIA, especially when we realize Moscow's role as an ongoing organizer of terrorism and the power of the old Communist mafia in former Soviet Bloc countries. Unfortunately, most of the "trusted" Czech contacts used by U.S. officials and journalists are likely agents of hidden Communist-era structures which continue to monopolize key positions in government and the economy.

During the Cold War the KGB did not succeed because of operational efficiency or perfection; rather, "agents of influence" always provided cover in the form of pre-baked interpretations and clever "insights" used to dissuade Western analysts from accepting certain facts, or believing key witnesses (including defectors). By providing a constant stream of useful information on matters of relative insignificance, East Bloc agents have long been positioned to override true information in favor of false information. Since there are more paid agents whispering lies than unpaid individuals with important truths, the lies seem to prevail and get reported in newspapers or intelligence reports. The truth languishes, unsupported by big money or big media.

The events in Egypt are part of a pattern, and they are part of a sequence. As the Russian exile Pavel Stroilov told Jamie Glazov of FrontpageMag.com in January of 2008, "These and other facts of FSB involvement in international terrorism ... have tremendous implications. Contrary to the view of many in the U.S., Russia is anything but a reliable ally of yours in the 'war on terror.' The Kremlin is playing a treacherous double game: while enjoying the West's support as an ally, it secretly supports and manipulates al Qaeda through FSB agents of influence."

This situation is no different in Egypt. The crowds calling for Mubarak's resignation are being manipulated by unseen agents of influence. To what end? The answer is not far to find. The Great Game has been going on for many decades. It is still being played, even now.